Trouble Finds Me
by bipperly
Summary: AU, Pre-Hogwarts. A three arc prologue to Harry's Hogwarts years. Cousins Harry and Dudley encounter and fights against strange and dangerous abnormalities that occur in their neighborhood. Part 1: Dudley's Box. Dudley brings back a mysterious box that contains an entity that possesses his cousin Harry.
**Well, it has been quite a long time since I have written something, and I am very rusty at it.**

 **Despite that I still hope this would be interesting. I have recently been watching the Monogatari Series, and a rabid plot bunny latched onto my head and wouldn't let go. So, this is only a slight crossover with the Monogatari series, but I try to bring in its mysterious elements. It probably didn't work.**

 **Well other than that, please enjoy, and review on anything I need to improve on. Thank you.**

 **Disclaimer: I obviously do not own Harry Potter, nor the Monogatari Series.**

* * *

All the accounts of Dudley Dursley's life before I took it was a blur to me. I had absolutely no way of contact with the boy, courtesy of his suffocating parents, and nor had he known something like me existed. The first time I've seen the boy, he was no older than 7, with a look of pure confusion painted on his face, like he had never seen anything quite like me in the entirety of his tiny insignificant life. First impressions aside, he was more useful than I predicted, and I regret to admit that if it wasn't for him, I would have died. Of course, I blame him as well, as to why I am alive.

Because he made me want to live.

Not that I wanted to die, in fact, I fear death itself.

But he forced me to want to be able to live.

And he payed for it as well.

* * *

A small young boy curiously took the ornate box hidden behind the mix of antique jewelry and music boxes. It did not look like anything special compared to others, but the boy thought it felt much more valuable than the rest of the other boxes combined. Tracing his thick fingers through the swirling pattern on the edge of the box, he found a latch and tried to pull it open. It wouldn't open. Frowning, he struggled to pry the top off, but to no avail.

If this was any other toy, he would have given up by now.

But deep down, the boy felt like opening it would be important.

He had to.

* * *

"Are you sure you want that, Diddy?"

The young boy pouted and nodded to his mother, prepared to wail if she dare to refuse. The woman hesitated to take the small chipped box, but the box was pushed into her arms by her impatient child. "You don't want to get a toy later?"

"I want this one!" the boy stomped his feet.

The strange ornate box he held glinted despite the dim lighting of the vintage furniture shop. The woman felt a slight chill run down the back of her neck, and she turned to see a strange man staring at her. She pushed the box back into Dudley's hands, and dragged her son further into the store to look for some vases.

The young boy, Dudley Dursley, looked back at the man. His messy blonde hair and beard, coupled by his unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt and upside down cross earrings must have frightened his mother off. He's never seen anyone dress like that before, and his mother must not have either. He learned from a very young age, that unfamiliar things, or people, are always unpleasant. His blue eyes lingered a few more moments on the strange adult, before he looked away.

Although his mother had deemed the stranger unpleasant, he cannot help but feel a sense of familiarity towards the man.

Perhaps they had met before?

No, someone who looked like that would have been memorable.

Maybe he looked like someone he knew.

He had never seen or known anyone who looked the same as the man who was growing more mysterious by the minute.

It was later, on the way home, while holding his strange new box, he happened to glance at his cousin Harry and felt the same sense of familiarity that the strange man gave off.

* * *

I do know one thing.

The Dursleys hated Harry Potter.

I do as well. Although not as bad as I used to.

It wasn't that the boy was bad. It wasn't that he doesn't act like other kids. It wasn't that he was too perfect, or too imperfect. He was completely average. Aside from the fact that he was a bit more mature than others (living with the Dursleys means he had to be mature) there was nothing remarkable about him.

They hated Harry Potter because he was different. Surrey, the area where Harry and the Dursleys lived, had never been kind to unfamiliarity.

Sticking to the status quo was an unspoken rule in Surrey, and Harry Potter's arrival had broken it.

Perhaps his aunt, Petunia Dursley, would have loved him, or even had loved him at one point.

But she was reminded of who he was, and what he was. An outsider. A burden. A freak.

An aberration.

* * *

Dudley Dursley himself did not hate Harry Potter. But it does not mean he acts kindly towards his cousin either. He grew up seeing how people treated his cousin, the outsider, and thought nothing of how he treated him as well. It wasn't that he held any sort of resentment against his cousin. It was normal to act the way the adults did, whispering rumors about Harry's drunk and unemployed parents, who died and abandoned a troubled child in the hands of poor, poor Petunia Dursley. It was normal to act the way he did, chasing Harry during breaks in school and hitting him.

He just felt nothing towards his cousin.

So that one fateful afternoon when he sat on the grassy patch in his backward while Harry toiled under the sun to weed his mother's garden, when he got (threatened) Harry to open the box for him, he felt fear towards his cousin for the first time.

It was just a moment. Harry held on to the latch and pulled. He gasped when a sharp part of the latch cut into his hand, and his blood trickled on the side of the box. And just like that, the box slammed open and sudden gust of wind blew past, making Harry fall onto his bottom. Dudley excitedly snatched the open box and found pieces of old torn paper that must have meant something long before.

It was disappointing.

* * *

For the first time in a long time, I am awake.

I took one deep, long breath, and exhaled, marveling at the rush of air leaving my body. Rather, it was not mine yet. I have longed to be in control for a long time, a chance to live, and now I have it. I stood up, staggering slightly, unused to how small and thin I am at the moment. I looked up to the sky and I laughed, the tremors rocking my body, and I felt tears roll down my face. I let my laugh trail off, and a hesitant voice called out, child like and unsure.

"What are you doing, you freak?"

I turned to the one who had spoken, a fat little child holding a strange little box. He posed aggressively, but his eyes betrayed his confusion and slight apprehension.

"Freak," I murmured. I met his eyes. 'Is that what you believe I am?"

He took a step back. "You... You're not Harry. You don't sound like Harry."

"I'll show you freak, boy, if that's what you want," I smirked and took a shaky step forward. I pulled on the boy's magic, my body's magic, and conjured flames around me. For a moment, I was strong, like the lord I was supposed to be, the lord I will soon be, then the drain on the magic destroyed my control and pulled me to the darkness.

* * *

When Harry Potter woke up feeling worse than he's ever felt before, he immediately knew he was in deep, deep trouble, when he immediately came face to face with the puce-colored face of his uncle Vernon and the pale pinched look aunt Petunia always had on.

He glanced at the window and saw that evening had come, but he could not even remember if he ever finished his chores.

Guessing from his relatives' faces, he must not have.

* * *

Dudley Dursley could not sleep that night.

He remembered the disappointment he had when he found the box to be empty.

He remembered the foreboding aura that surrounded his cousin, and held him up, like he was a puppet held by flimsy strings.

He remembered green eyes bleed to shining red, and he remembered the chilling, inhuman laugh that racked his cousin's body while it cried tears of blood.

He remembered the fear he felt when his cousin, or what used to be his cousin burned with non-real flames, and the crushing thought that something must have gone wrong because of him.

Dudley Dursley could not sleep that night, remembering the demonic red eyes that he knew would follow him in his nightmares.

I have school tomorrow, Dudley thought offhandedly.

* * *

The moment Dudley met Tom Marvolo Riddle was a memory Dudley would rather forget.

Scratch that. Dudley wouldn't want to forget the reason why he fears Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Even if it was unpleasant, he was better off remembering.

The day of their encounter started off terrible, as if warning both Dudley and Harry that things are just about to get complicated for both of them. Tired and groggy from sleep, the two boys had to force themselves up to face a new day, and the wide range of possibilities that could happen in a terrible day like that.

Dudley was unable to sleep due to the nightmarish depictions that his brain could conjure of red eyes and blood.

Harry was forced to complete his unfinished chores without any help from the fully capable adult (and housewife) that he lives with.

When they both got to school, Dudley did even have the strength and motivation to bully Harry, which is usually his morning routine. Instead, he absentmindedly dragged his feet after his group of friends who began running after a pale-faced Harry.

By the time the group had caught Harry, Dudley was thankful that he did not have to walk any longer after his friends.

He slowed to a stop, noticing that they are behind the school building. Dudley's friend Dennis had Harry pushed up against the wall, his fists clutching the front of Harry's shirt tightly. Dudley thought it looked rather comical, since Dennis was even shorter than Harry, and looked like an overgrown pixie threatening a person made out of thin brittle sticks (which he means Harry, of course).

Although he was completely surrounded, Harry didn't seem too trouble, unlike how he usually is when he knows he's about to get beat up.

Dudley tensed when their eyes met, and the red eyes that haunted him the whole night was reflected back at him. A series of flashing red lights hit all of his friends all of a sudden.

Then all his friends crumpled on the ground, unconscious, leaving Dudley alone at the mercy of a demon.

The demon smiles, and says out loud,

"What a time to be alive."

* * *

There was once a man who wanted to live.

He searched far and wide, for the cure to death, so he may live forever without the impending doom of becoming nothing.

He did everything he could, everything that people said he couldn't, shouldn't.

He never hesitated to take every course of action he was presented with, and he did not regret all that he had done.

It did not come to a surprise that his transgressions had caught up to him, and at the last moment of his life, he swore that he will never die.

And then he died.

But a part of him remained.

It continued to exist, a scourge to life, brought about by a man who exchanged all of his being for the infinite taste of life.

And just as the man had desired life before…

...the scourge hungered for it even more so.


End file.
